Jeanne D'Arc vs Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions

Today, I will be comparing two different PSP titles that fall under the Strategy Role Playing Game (SRPG) genre. Now, shall we begin?

Backgrounds:Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions is a remake of the SquareSoft's original Final Fantasy Tactics (PSOne). It boasts a fixed story dialogue, added cut-scenes with voices, new character classes (Dark Knight and Onion Knight) and a multiplayer mode.

Jeanne D'Arc: Developed by Level 5 (Dark Cloud series). This game features crisp, clean cut scenes, good voice work, and an intriguing story. Another solid title by the US company.

StoryJeanne D'ArcThis game takes place in medieval Europe, in France of all places. I'm going to let that sink in... A game where you play as French warriors... Once you get past the novelty of it, the story is actually quite good. The story follows Jeanne, a warrior selected by God to free fancy France from the English's rule. The game takes a base grounded in realism, with some added fantasy elements.

Final Fantasy TacticsYou control (default name) Ramza Beoulve, a member of illustrious House Beoulve. The family prides itself on it's tactical military prowess, so at a young age you are sent to The Akademy to learn the arts of war. He starts off as a naive, self-righteous youth, believing that he is fighting for equality, but eventually realizes that he's being used. You're standard tale of double crosses, political excommunication, and religious crusades follows in tow.

CharactersJeanne D'ArcEvery controllable character in this game has a personality and dialogue. This allows you to feel somewhat closer to the characters. The individualism of each of the characters made me enjoy reading the dialogue. From the overly ambitious Jeanne, to the distant and realist thief of the group, Colet. The characters have a nice variation, from the atypical jolly fat man, to the young archer who adds an 'ette' to the end of everyone's name. (Hur hur, French Puns)

Final Fantasy TacticsApart from Ramza and a handful of other story important characters, most of your units are generic fighters you can recruit from towns. Granted, by the time you hit the 2/3 way point, you should have enough 'special' storyline characters to almost phase out the generics. The development of Ramza as a character is quite an interesting one. He goes from being a gullible youth to being an idealist, fighting against the oppressive royalty. His best friend Delita goes though a transformation of a different kind though. He starts fighting to improve his rank from commoner, but after an emotional tragedy, he becomes much more jaded, and eventually becomes the thing he sought to destroy.

GameplayJeanne D'ArcThe combat is your typical SRPG grid based deal. You move your units into position and unleash your attacks. Positioning plays a bit of importance in this game, especially in attacking and defending. If you attack an enemy with a physical attack, it leaves an aura on the direct opposite side of them. If one of your units occupies that square and attacks with either a physical or magical attack, it will benefit from a boost to attack power and accuracy. When being attacked, being adjacent to allies gives you a boost to your defense and evasion ratings. Using this you can use diagonals to advance the troops, yet keep up a linked defense throughout the map. Jeanne and a few other characters can transform into Warriors of the Gods, or as I like to call them "McBuffypants". Best part about this transformation is that if they kill someone, they get another turn. I believe this was done to counter the arbitrary number of turns each fight is allowed. If your battle reaches round 13 in a 12 round combat, you get a game over screen. To customize your troops you need to fuse stones that give your character skills. This can get annoying if you spend your strong attacks and end up getting crap.

Final Fantasy TacticsCombat has been polished to a shine here. With realistic splash damage, you have to be careful when using AoE (area of effect) attacks, unless you want to damage your characters, unlike Jeanne D'Arc. The core of combat though is the class system. The game has a huge list of different jobs you can unlock in the game. If I recall right, there is over 20 in the PSP version. This allows you to customize your fighting unit greatly, picking skills from different classes to make each unit balanced or specialized. Positioning plays in the standard SRPG way, as in, attacking from behind or the side yield higher accuracy ratings. You can ride chocobo's in battle, but it might have too many downsides to do it. (Turn to mount, turn to dismount, using a character spot for the mount)

Conclusion:Jeanne D'Arc is treading on a market where Squaresoft has had considerable success. It's a good game, but it's not as customizable as Tactics, but the artwork is superior in my opinion. I enjoyed the turmoil of Tactics, I really did, but there's just .. something about Jeanne D'Arc that may make this my favorite of the two. Pending how the game ends (Yes, I haven't finished) I may be soured to it. If you're looking for a PSP SRPG, you can't go wrong with one of these. Hell, anything's better than the Wild Arms XF PSP game...